After all these years, people can’t stop playing Skyrim. First released in 2011, this fantasy RPG has been re-released several times on almost every platform and is one of the most popular mod download games. Recently, the programmer turned Twitch streamer Blurbs developed a new mod that allows his chat to voice NPCs in the game, and… the result was as disastrous as you can imagine.
The Blurbs mod, which is currently untitled and not publicly available, allows viewers to generate text-based voices for NPCs with lip movements and real-time subtitles. This is madness in the best sense of the word, because the listeners naturally started to talk about the first thing that came to their mind.
But the best part is the death of the playable characters. If a viewer’s NPC dies in Blurbs, that viewer will be banned from their channel for five minutes.
In conversation with My city Blurbs briefly explained how he created the mod, saying that the hardest part was learning the tools because he had never done anything like this before. He also said that “due to its complexity” the mod will not be publicly available, at least for now.
Of course, this is no ordinary mod. It requires multiple programs working together to make it work. I honestly doubt I could package this as an all-in-one mod and release it publicly, so no need for a name. However, I will be releasing a YouTube video soon with the resources I used to create it.
Although the voices used are AI, Blurbs has clearly stated that they are either “actors paid to use their voices” or “digitally created from scratch.” When asked how many viewers were temporarily banned, Blurbs said he had no idea.
I programmed it so that the audience can voice the enemies/thugs as well. So when I accidentally entered the bandit stronghold, I was chased by a whole crowd of enemies shouting nonsense from my cat. I had to fight them all so I lost a lot of good viewers that day lol.
While the current implementation is clunky, there’s definitely room for improvement, especially in terms of how viewers interact with streamers.
